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A Holocaust survivor who endured four concentration camps, a death march and the murder of her sister and brother by the SS, before going on to marry one of the British soldiers who liberated her, has died at the age of 95.

Gena Turgel became known as the Bride of Belsen after marrying her husband Norman six months after his British Army unit freed her from the death camp on April 15, 1945.

She was described on Saturday as one of the most remarkable of a generation of Holocaust survivors who had done so much to pass on their traumatising experience of the Nazi horrors as a warning from history.

At Bergen-Belsen, where she worked in the camp hospital, Mrs Turgel found herself nursing Anne Frank, the Dutch teenager whose posthumous account of hiding in her attic from the Germans would become one of the most famous accounts of the period.

Mrs Turgel later said of the encounter: “She was delirious, terrible, burning up. I gave her cold water to wash her down. We did not know she was special, but she was a lovely girl. I can still see her lying there with her face, which was so red as she had a breakout. And then she died.”

Born in Krakow, Poland, in 1923, Mrs Turgel, her mother and four of her nine siblings were rounded up by the Germans following the 1939 invasion of the country and forced into the city’s ghetto with just a sack of potatoes, some flour and a small number of belongings.

One brother was shot by the SS, another fled and was never seen again and her sister Miriam and her husband were shot after being caught trying to smuggle food into the Płaszów labour camp, to where the family had been moved.

In the winter of 1944 Mrs Turgel and her mother were made to walk to Auschwitz-Birkenau - leaving behind her sister Hela, who was never seen again - before spending four weeks on a "death march" to the Buchenwald death camp and finally being taken by cattle train to Bergen-Belsen.

In an interview she later described the horrors of the camp, saying: “When I arrived in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, I saw heaps of bodies lying around. Not just one or two but mountains as high as a tree in the garden.

“You could not distinguish if they were men or women – bones, skeletons, children’s bodies. You can’t possibly imagine the state of the place, it was horrendous.”

At one stage she survived the gas chambers, when the mechanism broke and she later said this narrow escape convinced her she had a duty to bear witness to the Holocaust by speaking to schoolchildren about it.

In 1987, Mrs Turgel published her story in a book titled I light a candle and her wedding dress, which was made from a British Army parachute, is on display at London's Imperial War Museum.

To the end Mrs Turgel was determined that no one should forget what had been inflicted on Europe’s Jews and other persecuted minorities in the name of ideology.

In April, at Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day event in London, she urged guests: “I beg you – don’t forget those who are less fortunate than yourselves”.

Jonathan Sacks, a former chief rabbi, said she was “one of the most remarkable Holocaust survivors I had the privilege to know”.

He added: “She was a blessing and inspiration to our community. Her work to educate generations about the horrors of the Holocaust was as powerful as it was tireless. Throughout her life, she lit countless candles in the human heart and helped bring much light to the world.”

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "The Gena Turgel we knew was the most beautiful, elegant and poised lady.

"Her strength, determination and resilience were unwavering, her powerful and wise words an inspiration. A shining light has gone out today and will never be replaced."